Current Research Interests

My research interests include systems biology of complex diseases, oncology and cancer biology and development of quantitative experimental methods for systems biology.
My current research focuses on dynamical model of autophagy and its interplay with apoptosis in cancer cells. I have built a mathematical model for autophagy and I have been working on the development of quantitative methods to detect dynamical aspects of autophagic response in cancer cells.

Education

Ph.D.

2013

Virginia Tech, Genomics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

MD

1999-2007

Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, IRAN.

Diploma

1995-1999

Mathematics and Biology, National Organization for Development of the Exceptional Talents (NODET), Shiraz, IRAN.

Personal

Iman is from Shiraz, Iran. He joined GBCB program in 2009 after receiving a Transdisciplinary Team Science Fellowship from Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and he was selected as Virginia Tech Outstanding Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student in 2012. Besides science and medicine, he works in different aspects of the arts including photography. He graduated from Iranian Youth Cinema Society (IYCS) in independent film-making and professional photography in 2004. His photos have been published in New England Journal of Medicine and Photojournalism Blog of The New York Times (A Visual Time Capsule Project). He has been awarded two times in Virginia Tech photography contests. In his free time he plays flute and does painting. He has been a freelance poet and blogger for more than 10 years. He is interested in philosophy and psychology and his recent studies have been on philosophy of language, Jungian Psychology and Rumi’s mystical poetries.